was employed with the most wanton barbarity.” He then refers to Bridgewater and to Strype; he adds, that "In 1578, Whitgift, bishop of Worcester, and vice-president of Wales, was ordered to employ torture to force answers from Catholics suspected of having heard Mass. (See Strype's Whitgift, 83.) The Catholic prisoner was hardly lodged in the Tower before he was placed on the rack.

During the reign of Elizabeth, the first victim who suffered hanging and quartering, for the sole exercise of their ministry, was Thomas Woodhouse. After him 123 other priests—that is, 113 secular priests, 8 Jesuits, 1 monk, and 1 friar.

“Moreover, 30 men and 2 women were executed as felons, for harbouring and abetting priests, besides numbers of clergymen and laymen who died of their sufferings in prison.

"Generally the court dispensed with the examination of witnesses. By artful and ensnaring questions an avowal was drawn from the prisoner, that he had been reconciled (to the Roman obedience); or had harboured a priest; or had been ordained beyond the sea; or that he admitted the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Pope, or rejected that of the Queen. Any one of these crimes was suffi cient to consign him to the scaffold. Life, indeed, was offered on the condition of conformity to the established worship, but the offer was generally refused, and the refusal was followed by death; and the butchery, with very few exceptions, was

performed on the victim while he was yet in perfect possession of his senses." Such is the testimony of Dr Lingard.

Henry VIII. was such a monster of iniquity that atrocities committed in his reign can only appear a matter of course. We shall therefore pass rapidly over two or three of the martyrdoms of which he and his tools were guilty.

The following extracts, from an old black-letter volume of "The Chronicles of England," may be interesting :

"The xxii. daye of July 1533, was one John Frith, a young man of excellent wyt and learnyng, burned in Smithfield for his opinions conceryning the Sacrament, and with him a yong man called Andrewe Hewet, a tayler's seruant."

The fact of John Frith's having been thus cruelly put to death on account of his sacramental views is also recorded by Stow.

And we may here observe that, if a belief in the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist, and an utter denial of the spiritual headship of the Church in the person of any temporal sovereign, be crimes worthy of death, then-but for the civilisation of this nineteenth century—the rack, the faggot, and the gallows would have as much work to do to-day, amongst members of the once bloody (though so-called "Reformed") Church of England, as it had amongst our English brethren of the Roman faith in the times of which we treat !

In Stow's "Chronicles" we find the following brief account of Friar Forest's martyrdom :

"Doctor John Forest, a frier obseruant, was apprehended for that in secret confession he had declared to many the King's subjects, that the King was not supreame head of the Church, &c. ; upon this point he was examined, and answered that he tooke his oth with his outwarde man, but his inward man neuer consented thereunto. Then being further accused of diuers hereticall opinions, he submitted himselfe to the punishment of the Church. . . . But when his abjuration was sent him to read, he utterlie refused it. Whereupon he was condemned, and afterward, on a paire of new gallowes set up for that purpose in Smithfield, hee was hanged, by the middle and arme-pits, quicke, and under the gallowes was made a fier, wherewith he was brent and consumed, on the 22 day of May (1538). There was a scaffold set by before the prisoner, whereon was placed Sir Richard Gresham, lord mayor of the citie, the dukes of Norffolke and Suffolke, the lord admiral, the lord priuie seale, and diuers other of the counsell, besides a great number of citizens and others. Also a pulpet was there set, in the which M. Hugh Latimer, bishoppe of Worcester, preached a sermon, confuting the frier's errors, and moouing him to repentance, but all auailed not; so that in the end, when the Bishoppe asked him what state he would die in, the frier with a loud voice answered and sayde that, if an angell should come downe from

heauen, and teach him any other doctrine than he had receiued, and beleeuid from his youth, he would not now beleeue him, and that if his body shoulde bee cut ioynte after ioynte, or member after member, brent, hanged, or what paine soeuer might be doone to his bodie, hee would neuer turne from his olde profession; more he saide to the Byshoppe that seuen yeeres past he durst not have made such a sermon for his life.

"And so he was hanged, and brent, as afore is shewed, and an huge great image named Daruell Gatherm" (the figure of a saint), "hauing beene brought out of Wales to this gallowes in Smithfield, was there brent with the said frier Forest."-(Vol. i. p. 574.)

In Froude's "History of England," we find a still fuller account of Forest. (See vol. iii. p. 291.) We here give an abridged transcription from it :

"Since the dissolution of his order, in consequence of the affair of the nun of Kent, he had halted between a state of concealed disaffection and pretended conformity.

"In his office of Confessor he was found to have instructed his penitents that, for himself, he had. denied the Bishop of Rome in his outward, but not in his inward man; and he had encouraged them, notwithstanding their oath, to persevere in their old allegiance.

"If he had been tried, and had suffered like Sir Thomas Moore by the monks of the charter-house, his sentence would have ranked with theirs. . .

"When first arrested he was terrified ; he acknowledged his offences, submitted, and was pardoned. But his conscience recovered its strength. . . . declared his belief that in matters spiritual the Pope was his proper sovereign, that the Bishop of Rochester was a martyr in matters secular

his duty was to his prince.

"Forest was to be proceeded against for an offence against spiritual truth, as well as against the law of the land, and Cranmer is found corresponding with Cromwell on the articles on which he was to be examined.

.. Forest was indicted for heresy in a court where we would gladly believe that Cranmer did not sit as president. He was found guilty, and was delivered over in the usual form to the secular arm.

"A day at the end of May was fixed for Forest's death. Latimer was selected to preach on the occasion. . . . 'If he would yet, with his heart, return to his abjuration' (wrote Latimer to Cromwell), 'I would wish his pardon, such is my foolishness' (?) He also adds, 'When Forest shall suffer, I should wish that my stage stood near unto Forest,' going on to say that he might convert him, &c.

"A gallows was erected over the stake, from which the wretched victim was to be suspended in a cradle of chains. When the machinery was complete, and the chips of the idol (Welsh, Saint, Dderfel, Gadern) lay ready, he was brought out and placed upon a platform. The Lord Mayor,